Teaching with Technology

Today I stumbled across this tool called Stripgenerator whilst looking through my Google reader.   There seem to be a lot of flash based comic book creators out there at the moment and I’ve already blogged about Comiqs.   I decided that I’d follow the same sort of format and allow the children a complete carte blanche to see what they came up with.

I was really pleased with the results, within minutes the children had started to come up with all sorts of wild and wacky stories that were really creative.   I thought that this could be a really useful stimulus for the start of a creative writing lesson.   The children would have three pannels that effectively have the beginning middle and end of a story.

I have to say I love the work of Animoto.  I wanted to put together a presentation for the end of the Leavers Assembly that would tug at the old heart strings and I think that this will do it.   Really easy to sort out once you’ve registered.   Thanks also to ‘the guys’ for sorting me out with the educators account so quickly.

Arranging the timetable for parents evening can be a real hassle in terms of the communication that is involved.   Parents keep asking for times that are taken and cancelling others, often leading to a mass of notes flying backwards and forwards between teacher and parent.  

This year I decided that it would be different…

As normal I sent out the letters asking the parents to state the time that they wanted for the parents evening.  (I suppose that next year I could do this via a GDocs form, but hey ho hindsight is a wonderful thing!)   When the responses came back I set up a GDoc with a simple table in it showing the times that had been booked in the first wave.

I then sent out an email to all the children which included the document so that they could show their parents which times they had been allocated.   One point to note.   I made sure that the parents could only read the document and not contribute to it directly as I could foresee a scenario of people changing appointments etc.  

I asked them to email me if there were any problems with the times and I was quite suprised at how well this system worked as you can see below.

It turned out to be a really efficient method of communication with the parents that saved an awful lot of stress.   The parents really seemed to appreciate the simplicity too.

I came across this room yesterday.  It’s an interesting idea for bringing educators together.

A week or so ago I posted about a site called Lulu which allowed you to publish children’s work.   I recieved the results yesterday and I have to say that I was very impressed with the results.

The whole process from ordering to the books arriving took just over a week and the quality of the printing and binding was excellent.   The children were absolutely extatic when they saw the results.   As mentioned in the previous post I think that this is now a real alternative to buying a traditional book for the children to record work in.

In September I’m going to try and do all my children’s History in this way and see where we get to.   I’ll be giving the children different aspects of the Victorian period to research to bring together in this way.

The question is will the quality of the work match the quality of the end product - I’m sure it will.

AIM: To give the children an open ended task without constraint and see what they produced.

To record the skill that I observed and that were being developed.

To have some fun!

WHY:   After yesterday’s post about the massive change I believe needs to take place in education, I decided that I needed to put my money where my mouth is and actually give the children the freedom to explore ideas and create something.   I decided to use a site I’d come across called Comiqs.

blogpost from mrkp on Comiqs

The task that I set the children was as open ended as it could be.   Simply I showed them the site and told them that their task was to create a comic of their own.   The subject was entirely up to them and there would be no time limit.   I told them that they could use anywhere in school to take photographs and that I would allow them to use any props that they could find.   I provided them with paper to sketch out a very rough storyboard and ‘trained’ some ‘comic engineers’ on how to use the digital cameras and the Comiqs site.   Other than that I sat back, facilitated and watched events unfold.

For the benefit of this post I’ll put the skills that I saw chronologically in bold capitals.

The first thing that was interesting was the discussion that went on.   Some of the ideas that the children came up with were incredible, if a little zany and at times gory.   CREATIVE THOUGHT.  

They were all different and really creative.  What quickly became clear to the children was that they were going to struggle to take photographs of these particular tales, so the discussion moved onto how ‘crazy’ a story they could tell within the limits of the school environment.   ANALYSING INFORMATION AND REASONED DECISION MAKING.

The groups then spent a long time discussing / arguing about the finer points of the story lines and trying to storyboard their ideas.   This was I think the hardest part of the process for the children, but the most constructive.   Most children found the transition from an idea in their head to an idea on paper very difficult.   The fact that they had to ‘think visually’ was very new to them.   They are after all used to writing stories in a traditional way.    However, once they realised that the pictures could be set up to show detail and add to the story development the really took off.   STORY PLANNING, CONCEPTALISATION AND DISCUSSION.

At this point I was really shocked at just how much thinking needed to go into the planning of the stories in terms of deciding exactly how a picture would / wouldn’t help the story.   Discussion moved onto close-ups, long shots etc.   MEDIA LITERACY

When children finally started to take the photographs to insert into the site it was hilarious!   Everyone was laughing and the atmosphere in the classroom was brilliant.   It was a definate ‘moment’ in teaching kids.

The Comiqs site is really intuitive to use.  The children picked it up really quickly once they had been shown the basics.

The comics have not yet been finished, it has taken us all day, but all the children have been totally engrossed, engaged and on task.   When you think about the skills that they are developing I think you have to say that its been a very successful day.   We’ve not even started the ’proper’ writing on the comics yet!   When the children have finished I’ll post some examples and put my final lessons learnt.

I have to say I’ve not looked forward to a Monday morning like this for a very very long time! 

Over the past few weeks I have become more and more convinced that there needs to be a revolution in the way in which we view the education of our future learners.   I have become passionate about the need to change almost to the point of obsession.   I defy anyone to watch the following presentation by Sir Ken Robinson and then read the poem that Doug posted on his excellent blog and not be converted.

The revolution is upon us, the revolution is education!

Sir Ken Robinson @ Royal Society for the Arts

The Things We Steal From ChildrenBy Dr John Edwards

If I am always the one to think of where to go next.
If where we go is always the decision of the curriculum or my curiosity and not theirs,
If motivation is mine,
If I always decide on the topic to be studied, the title of the story, the problem to be worked on,
If I am always the one who has reviewed their work and decided what they need,
How will they ever know how to begin?

If I am the one who is always monitoring progress.
If I set the pace of all working discussions,
If I always look ahead, foresee problems and endeavour to eliminate them,
If I swoop in and save them from cognitive conflict,
If I never allow them to feel and use the energy from confusion and frustration,
If things are always broken into short working periods,
If myself and others are allowed to break into their concentration,
If bells and I are always in control of the pace and flow of work,
How will they learn to continue their own work?

If all the marking and editing is done by me,
If the selection of which work is to be published or evaluated is made by me,
If what is valued and valuable is always decided by external sources or by me,
If there is no forum to discuss what delights them in their task, what is working,
what is not working, what they plan to do about it,
If they have not learned a language of self-assessment,
If ways of communicating their work are always controlled by me,
If our assessments are mainly summative rather then formative,
If they do not plan their way forward to further action,
How will they find ownership, direction and delight in what they do?

If I speak of individuals but present learning as if they are all the same,
If I am never seen to reflect and reflection time is never provided,
If we never speak together about reflection and thinking and never develop a vocabulary for such discussion,
If we do not take opportunities to think about our thinking,
If I constantly set them exercises that do not intellectually challenge them,
If I set up learning environments that interfere with them learning from their own actions,
If I give them recipes to follow,
If I only expect the one right conclusion,
If I signify that there are always right and wrong answers,
If I never let them persevere with something
really difficult which they cannot master,
If I make all work serious work and discourage playfulness,
If there is no time to explore,
If I lock them into adult time constraints too early,
How will they get to know themselves as a thinker?

If they never get to help anyone else,
If we force them to always work and play with children of the same age,
If I do not teach them the skills of working co-operatively,
If collaboration can be seen as cheating,
If all classroom activities are based on competitiveness,
If everything is seen to be for marks,
How will they learn to work with others?

For if they…
have never experienced being challenged in a safe environment,
have had all of their creative thoughts explained away,
are unaware what catches their interest and how then to have confidence in that interest,
have never followed something they are passionate about to a satisfying conclusion,
have not clarified the way they sabotage their own learning,
are afraid to seek help and do not know who or how to ask,
have not experienced overcoming their own inertia,
are paralysed by the need to know everything before writing or acting,
have never got bogged down,
have never failed,
have always played it safe,
how will they ever know who they are?

AIM: To write a Year book for the leavers of Year Six.

WHY:

• To give the children a nice momento of their time at our school.
• To create a sense of occasion as the children leave.

When I was on a course on Friday Stephen Drury showed me a great publishing site called Lulu. Immediately all thoughts of a small red headed Scottish singer were abandoned as it became clear just how powerful the site coud be. (Ignore the German on the thumbnail, the site is in English) 

The great thing about the site is that you can upload Word / PDF files to create different types of book that can be published, but crucially from a school perspective you don’t have to put in bulk orders.   This ment that the Yearbook once created could be purchased by parents and delivered to their own homes.   No more hassle for the school collecting orders etc.

The other amazing thing was the price.   Each book cost only £3.80 to produce and because the site is in America £6.00 to post.   Under a tenner for a 80 page properly bound book!   I think as these things go that is great value.

It was really easy to sort out the yearbook itself.

1. Download a template from Lulu for the size of book that you want.   This is well worth doing as there are funny margin settings to do with printing and this just makes life easier.
2. Set up a template for the kids to put their pictures/thoughts in.
3. Set up file for the teachers/head/significant others to record their thoughts in
4. Bring them all together when complete into a single file.

    5.  Next upload the file to Lulu and follow the on screen instructions to publish.   This is when you can set the price etc.   The only thing that was slightly tricky was getting the cover art sorted out, but there is a template that you can download to help you.  

Once you’ve completed the upload you can share the web address with those children who want to but the book.  I decided to go for this approach rather than opening it up to the web as there were pictures of the children with their names on.   This way I felt was an acceptable compromise.

The wonderful thing is that now the whole ordering / delivery side of things is taken out of my hands.   Parents can go online with the children and order the book to bring in before the end of term to get it signed etc.   Just a word of warning though, the site is American based so there is quite a long lead time on the order, we’re keeping our fingers crossed that everything will arrive on time!

However I think that the most important and exciting prospect for this type of development is the impact it could have on the way children produce work using ICT.   In all the time that I’ve been involved in ICT in primary schools the main criticism from those unwilling to change their practice has bee the argument that children will ‘have nothing to show’ for their work.

Surely this is the solution!

Imagine the scenario where at the end of the year a child is able to produce a professional looking book that contains their work over the entire year!   This would surely give that sense of audience and end product that raises attainment.   There is no limit to the things that could be shown blogs, experiments, photos in fact anythingthat can put into a word document.

You could also produce a book per topic for the class eg when the children have researched a topic all their work could be put into a single book for display.   The possibilities are endless.   School could also use it as a fund raising exercise if they wanted to.   I think it could have the power to change my practice fundamentally.

LESSONS LEARNT:  

• The incentive for children to produce a professional looking end product will motivate and engage children.
• This is a great site that is easy to use for anyone with a basic level of digital literacy.
• The speed of the process is one of it’s strengths, it took us two days to produce the book from start to finish.
• This type of printing could do away with the argument of children not having ‘anything to show’ for their ICT work.
• The cost is reasonable and in no way prohibitive.
• The site takes the hassle out of the organisational side of things for school as everything is delivered to the child’s home.

This is something I’ll definately be doing again!

 AIM: To write a collaborative play script using Google Docs

WHY: Writing using Google Docs should allow the teachers and children to work on the script in their own time without having to be together.

Using the Forms should allow all the children to contribute their ideas to the script.

The children should have a greater ownership of the script if they have contributed to it in a meaningful way.

Teaching the final year of primary / elementary school is a stressful job at the best of times.   There’s the pressure of SAT’s, the emotional strain of the children leaving and then there’s the dreaded ‘Leaver’s Production.’   As time has gone on in my own school this has become a grander and grander affair that consumes the final three weeks of the year.   The results on stage are always outstanding, however the toll on my body / sanity usually less favourable.   This year I decided that I would do something different and try to engage the children a little more in the whole writing aspect.   That’s where Google Docs came in.

The first thing that I decided to do was to get the children’s ideas together and distill the best elements into a script.   I did this by setting up a form that was sent out to all the children to fill in.   I asked them the types of songs they would like to sing, the teachers they would like to embarrass, the theme we should use etc.    

The principle of this was great, the ideas all flooded back into my spreadsheet .   Unfortunately the ideas themselves were to be frank pretty useless.   This, I hasten to add, was due to my own lack of discussion prior to sending the form and not due to the form itself.   In fact I think that this could be a great way of gathering ideas in the future as long as the children get the right input beforehand.   So I was forced to carry on with only my year group partner to help.

What has subsequently occured has been a bit of a revalation.   After our initial meeting to sort out the overall structure of the script we went our seperate ways and worked on individual aspects of the script.

This worked brilliantly, we were able to work on the script in our own time and see the changes that we had each produced.   As a result the script was written more quickly and efficiently than we could have imagined.  

It was extremely helpful to decide beforehand the areas that we would each work on.   This gave us a much clearer focus and stopped any unnecessary ‘creative differences’.   We also used the document as a shared ‘To Do’ list which helped us keep a track of where we were up to organising props etc.   The fact that we didn’t have to be in the same room at the same time was fantastic and made the whole writing of the script a lots less stressful.

One unexpected yet welcome development happened when we published the page to show the children where we were up to.   Once the children have the web address they read the script at home and we were daily inundated with e-mails suggesting plot changes, huge action set pieces etc.   The script became the talk of the playground and generated a huge amount of constructive conversation between the children.   It was with great regret that we had to sideline many of the larger more extravagant ideas, however in terms of the children’s contribution to the script and gaining ownership of the production, it was a fantastic to see. 

  From a starting position of no ideas the children now were debating the relative merits of different ideas.

Further advantages to using Google docs for this script were that the children didn’t all have to have a full copy of the script.   We were able to print them the relevant part, saving a great deal of money on photocopying for the school.   This doesen’t sound like a lot, but in my school every penny counts.  If children wanted to see the whole script they just went online.  Once more using Google Docs ment that if they lost their script they could simply go online and print it off.   No more hassling me a lunchtime for extra scripts!   This fact alone massively reduced my stress levels as the cry of ‘I’ve lost my script’ is one that every teacher dreads.

The curtain has yet to open on the production, but already expectations and excitement levels are high.   One thing is absolutely clear in my mind, allowing children to be part of the organic development of the script has already made it a far better prioduction than it would have been.   The ownership the children have over the script has brought us all closer together as a class.   Now they just have to remember their lines!

LESSONS LEARNT

• Writing the script using Google Docs did make the whole task more managable.
• The use of Forms to gather ideas would have been sucessful if I had put more time into explaining to the children exactly what I had wanted from them.
• Publishing the document even in it’s initial stages allowed the children to watch the script develop and gave them the opportunity to suggest additional ideas. (I don’t think in this case giving editing rights to the children would have maintained the unified ‘feel’ of the script - I could be wrong though.)
• Publishing also allowed the sharing of the script in a simple way that saved resources and money.

This is one that I’ll be doing again.

Over the past few weeks I have become more and more absorbed in the world of web 2.0 or as some call it the ‘edublogosphere.’   The benefits of blogging were, if truth be told, unclear at the beginning of the process, however as I have continued I have become more and more convinced as to its benefits.   As the term ‘read / write web’ is also being throw aroubd alot at the moment I thought that I would try explain (partially to myself) reasons why I’m blogging in terms of reading blogs and writing blogs.

READING BLOGS:

1. Like most teachers I’m quite nosey / curious, reading blogs lets you know what is going on in your particular area of interest.   That could be the latest developments in using technology in the classroom, or finding out what Hannah Montanna’s up to today.   There are blogs to suit all types of interests.
2. Reading blogs makes you aware of things that you wouldn’t just stumble across on the Internet, both good and bad.   The web is so large and ever expanding that there’s no way you could keep up with it without a wide network of similarly minded people.  
3. Using an RSS reader is exciting and interesting, you never quite know what is going to drop into your reader.   The posts that you subscribe to can be as varied and diverse as you like, it also saves you having to go round individual blogs, you can just go to the posts that you want to comment on.
4. If you choose carefully the blog that you subscribe to reading blogs has to be one of the best professional development tools there is.   I can honestly say that I’ve learnt more in the past few months than I have in years of going on courses.
5. You feel like you’re connected to something rather special and that you’ve got your finger on the pulse of things.   Sharing good practice really makes you feel good.  It also brings to mind the age old teaching sayings about no true original thought and it being pointless to reinvent the wheel.

BUT: It can be very time consuming.   You have to either limit the number of feeds that you have in your reader or put in the time to check what’s going on on a daily basis.   At the weekend I had to go through over 300 new items.   You can’t delete any for fear of missing out on something.   Be careful about how many feeds you sign up for - you may get much more than you wished for / can cope with.

WRITING BLOGS:

1.  Writing blogs is a great reflective tool.  Once you get over the initial strangeness of recording you thoughts and throwing them out there, it really does help you get your own ideas sorted out in your head.   At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter if people are actually reading your blog or not!
2. It’s good to share.   To get a comment on your blog that is positive is a great feeling, even if that person is half way around the world and you’ll never meet them.   The fact that someone is listening to what you have to say is a great ego boost.
3. It’s a great way of recording your ideas.   So often in teaching you’re rushing around from one thing to the next that you forget all the great things that you do in the classroom.  The discipline of writing a blog makes you realise just how good a teacher you are, even though you don’t realise it.
4. Watching little red dots grow on a Clustermap is a strangely exciting and addictive thing.   There can’t be a blogger out there who doesn’t feel a rush of pride when their dots change size.  

BUT:   It’s worryingly addictive (If you didn’t understand that point four then there’s still hope for you.)   It does take time and effort which needs to be managed so as not to become all encompassing.

All things considered though my blogging experience so far has been entirely positive and it’s something that I have introduced into my classroom this week.

To be continued …